


always crashing in the same car

by south_like_sherman



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Bisexual Character, Bisexuality, Book 4: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Crushes, Depression, First Love, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Overdosing, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Triwizard Tournament, Unrequited Love, basically it's too sad n i fucked up ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2019-01-05 20:57:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12197292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/south_like_sherman/pseuds/south_like_sherman
Summary: "The first time Harry sees Cedric, he's thirteen. Far too young to fall in love, of course. Just old enough to notice the way Cedric’s hair is falling in copper brushstrokes over his ivory skin as he smiles, the way the sunlight doesn't quite illuminate his face as it does spill out of him. An entire sun, beating inside of him. A heart."* * *fragments of harry's first love, and how that royally fucked him up. boy needs a childhood yknow?





	always crashing in the same car

The first time Harry sees Cedric, he's thirteen. Far too young to fall in love, of course. Just old enough to notice the way Cedric’s hair is falling in copper brushstrokes over his ivory skin as he smiles, the way the sunlight doesn't quite illuminate his face as it does spill out of him. An entire sun, beating inside of him. A heart.

A sharp elbow jabs into his ribs, and a brief exhale of air escapes from between Harry’s teeth. He flicks his eyes to the left, where Alicia– the aforementioned rib-jabber – is swinging a leg over her broom, a sharp glare directed at Harry gleaming beneath her lowered lashes.

The corner of Harry’s mouth hitches up as he shrugs his shoulders at her, eyebrows set at an apologetic tilt. He glances back towards Cedric, his grin softening into something hazy, something yellow and dazed and pure.

Cedric grasps Oliver Wood’s hand in a tight handshake, a gleaming flash of teeth peeking between his curling lips, face spread in an honest burst of life. Because he's alive and he's here, so why shouldn't he smile? His eyes flash green in the sunlight, and Harry thinks of traffic lights. _Go_.

He almost misses the whistle.

* *

It's funny how alive Cedric looks in the woods. In green. Because that's the next time Harry sees him, really. More importantly, next time Cedric sees him and their green, green eyes touch through the ocean of air for a second and it's somehow the closest Harry’s ever felt. Cedric’s eyes aren't really green at all, when Harry thinks about it, but – close enough. He opens his mouth to speak, and an ocean fills his throat.

“This is Amos Diggory, everyone,” says Mr. Weasley, butting into Harry’s Cedric induced reverie. “He works for the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. And I think you know his son, Cedric?”

Fuckin’ Cedric, Harry thinks to himself, wiping his clammy palms on the rough denim of his jeans. He's blushing, he's sure of it; he's all too familiar with the sudden heat spread across his cheek bones, the watercolour splashes of red puddling down to his chest in slow drips. See, sometimes he feels like a painting. Watercolour, and rain would ruin him.

“Hi.” Cedric grins, green (not green, Harry reminds himself) eyes flickering around the group on the hilltop, hands stuffed in his pockets. There's a funny little flutter in Harry’s ribcage, something rising in his threat,

“Hi,” Harry mumbles in unison with the rest of the company, his voice tremulous and filled with a dreadful kind of hope. ( _Go_.)

* *

When they pull Cedric’s name out of the goblet Harry feels a kind of rush of pride, a hot red glow of _yes, yes, yes_ pounding in his ears and a low, simmering anxiety curdling in his stomach. And then of course, the goblet sputters again and spits him into a fuckin’ mess. But it's the beginning that matters, isn't it? The dream of normality, of heart-crushing mundanity he almost had.

Because something happened and suddenly he's screaming, and he doesn't stop because how can he? Because Cedric is on the ground and he's not breathing, and Harry can still see green flashing behind his eyes and he's still thinking _go-go-go_ and Cedric’s stopped and suddenly Harry has too, but he hasn't, he really hasn't and everything's going so fast.

There are trumpets playing, and people are cheering and he doesn't know why because his fingers are still wrapped around Cedric’s because how can he let go, and he thinks he's still screaming but he's not sure if he's making a sound at all, and someone's saying something but he can't quite hear because he won't let go, because he couldn't leave Cedric, not there. Not with bones and granite and shackles and cold, unyielding green because Cedric’s so alive, he's still so alive and so, so green.

* * *

Here: Harry dreams in green. In light, sudden and bright and too much flashing behind the red of closed eyelids. Go, he thinks in the back of his mind as a boy’s heartbeat stops and his is suddenly too loud. Traffic lights. He says ‘a boy’ because if he gets anymore specific he's going to start crying. A pointless endeavour, because it feels like he already is. An entire ocean in his minds eye, spilling over his lashes in a sea of green salt and he'd rather scream than cry.

He thinks he's screaming anyway, over gravestones and heartbreak and living death in the eyes of a boy. Cedric. The boy’s name is Cedric, and Harry’s crying.

Hands on his wrists, dragging him towards stone and shackles, low static buzzing in the back of his head. (A car radio in Mr. Dursley’s Bentley, crackling out reruns of David Bowie in the spill of sweltering summer days. The car’s going to tip. Or it's not, but – Harry feels like it is. His head whipping back in a slow-motion crash. Glass. Shackles. A graveyard and summer, dying in the eyes of a boy who never really lived. David Bowie, crooning over the radio.) ( _Jasmine, I saw you peeping... as I pushed my foot down to the floor_...)

But Harry opens his eyes, and the car’s not crashing and he's sitting in Number 4 Privet Drive with his knees pulled up to his chest and his heart falling apart in his ribcage, and he's pretending to breathe because he's coping, goddamnit. Because Cedric’s gone, and he's coping.

* *

Harry has a headache. The kind that settles in the back of your head in a low, aching grind, spread in an uncomfortable layer of seared pain over your skull, and you can't think, because – he can't think. Static in his ears, but it's ok because he's coping. (He gets whiplash. Glass in his eyes.) But coping doesn't make his headache go away, so he goes out to the pharmacy because the Dursley’s don't have any goddamn head-ache pills for some reason and it hurts.

He buys the bigger bottle, because really, it's just more cost-effective. £5.79. Less than the small bottle in the long run. So it's cost-effective. And he gets it. Because he's coping and saving at the same time. Obviously.

And he's home alone for some reason, or — maybe the Dursley’s said they were going out, or maybe they didn't but it doesn't matter because they're out regardless and he's home alone. And his headache is still there, so he takes the two pills with a glass of water because that's what the label says. And he waits.

His head still hurts, so ok, he thinks. Ok. And takes another pill, because two are better than one. Obviously. And it's cost-effective, after all. It's a big bottle. Cost-effective. So he waits again and his heart’s louder than the clock and his thoughts are buzzing, buzzing, buzzing – static, and David Bowie on the radio. See, there's a graveyard in the back of his mind, and a body with a pulse trapped in his throat, and – his head still hurts. He takes another pill. Swallow. Now another, and then another after that because six are better than three and he can still see green. And honestly, it's easy once he starts. Easy to keep swallowing, and maybe his headache’s gone now but that doesn't matter because it's cost-effective and it's such a big bottle and — he's coping.

He thinks of a boy, smiling at him from the top of a hill, laughing and – not laughing. An optical illusion. He's crying. Swallow.

A low, bitter tide rises in the back of his throat and he chokes it back, one hand clamped over his mouth as salt crusts at his eyes. The boy on the hill’s still crying, and Harry thinks he might be crying too so he swallows another wave in his throat and tips back three more pills, because he thinks his head might still hurt after all.

Five minutes later he's choking up his heart and his lungs and his stomach onto the Dursley’s tiled bathroom floor and he thinks he's dying, and he's trying to make a sound but he can't and it hurts. It hurts that he's just wasted half of a bottle of £5.79 pills for nothing, because – his headache’s back. And maybe he's not coping.

His cheek is pressed against the floor, nails tracing the seams between the tiles as the ocean in his minds eye spills over the rim of reality in an endless tide of green, unbreakable salt brimming at his lashes, and he kind of wants to die. Because Cedric’s gone, and he's not coping at all, and everything's still so green.

**Author's Note:**

> hey!!! hope you all enjoyed oml im so sorry this wasn't supposed to happen? please comment/leave kudos or smth tho i need reassurance and i love each and every one of u very much sorry this is kinda shitty and if someone doesn't tell me they like it within the first twelve hours or smth i will most likely take this down bc i have crippling self-doubt so yeah that might happen i am most likely embarsssing myself  
> the title is from that david bowie song in case u were wondering  
> my tumblr is @the-girl-who-cried ship i'd love to talk to any of u x  
> thank you so much for reading again, have a lovely day!
> 
> ~ kinzie


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